Nathaniel's Nutmeg

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Very importantly, this book gave me a interest to read more books about this time period and explore it in greater depth.

I wished there were more about the Breda Treaty, where the Dutch traded with the English the island of Manhattan (yes, that one in New York) with Rhun Island.The particular focus is on the Banda archipelago, which was famous for being the world's only source of nutmeg and mace (at least until the Victorians learnt how to cultivate it elsewhere). The British East India Company was originally established to promote trade and compete with Dutch in the East Indies (rather than the Indian subcontinent. pomander, which contained a large quantity of the spice, could even stave off the dreaded `sweating syckness' that accompanied the `pestiferous time of the pestilence'.

For about two hundred years no one had the brilliant idea of taking some seeds and planting them somewhere else, it seems. Throughout most of the book Milton does an admirable job using plenty of primary documents, but when it comes to Courthope, Milton shrugs off academic rigors and paints a picture of a selfless savior. To my credit, I have been a librarian for a long time and rarely do I start something that I don't think I'll like. Consider the humble jar of nutmeg pushed to the back of your kitchen cupboard, among all the other spices that you hardly ever use. In short, Milton seems too ready to paint this lame, hero narrative to try strengthen what is already weak writing.At the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, Run's harvest of nutmeg turned it into the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a fierce and bloody battle between the all-powerful Dutch East India Company and a small band of ragtag British adventurers led by the intrepid Nathaniel Courthope. The subsequent peace deal between the two nations gave Holland Run and the British Manhattan; New York was born. Have you a great care to receive such nutmegs as be good, for the smallest nutmegs be worth nothing at home.

I miss, however, more references to sources other than the British ones: I mean local, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, who were the active countries in the region at the time of this developments. Maybe one day people will laugh at the lenghts we go now to get access and control over the oil resources. Despite it being written as nonfiction, the narrative that Milton uses in this book can altogether causes it to be read like a fiction. Lots of interesting, sometimes incredible, true tales of adventure and discovery, but put together in a dry fashion and which, to me, lacked continuity.This was a fascinating book about the Spice race, that time in history when the great powers of Europe were looking for the fastest ways to the East and the competition to control the spice trade was at its height. I want to give this book one star due to those shortcomings but since there are not many books dedicated for this part of Indonesia's history I decided to cut the author some slack.

He can at times seem to glorify the English, while putting some of their bitter rivals, such as the Dutch, in a less delicate light. First, is that the popularity of nutmeg caused the rise of the East India Company, which becomes the British overseas representation of His (or Her) Majesty’s government. Milton attempts to tell this story through the letters of the sailors and merchants involved in this trade. There were quite lengthy accounts of various fighting between the English and the Dutch over controls of these islands (and some other places including a very long tale about a riot in Java. Of course, we are also informed about the killings and slavery of the Bandanese, courtesy of both the VOC and the infamous governor general of the East Indie JP Coen, whose big statue can still be found in a big museum in Jakarta instead of being blasted to smithereens for committing genocide.Combining the forces of paper agreement, guns, ships, and forts, both the English and the Dutch tricked and forced the hands of the natives to sell them monopoly rights for the nutmeg. He and the other swashbuckling characters of the East India trade are all but unknown today, but they swashed their way to creating the greatest Metropolis of our time. When a doubting merchant tackled Sidney on his enthusiasm for being separated from Chancellor the old man had a ready answer.